Boost Your HAPPINESS With These Tips

It’s 2021, a New Year! But I know for some, it just feels like an endless and bleak continuation of 2020. The restrictions of the Global Pandemic continue with the latest Lockdown 3 in the UK.

Let’s face it we’ve all binge watched Netflix, had more Zoom calls and quizzes than we can count, put on a few extra pounds by rewarding ourselves with a few naughtier food treats, walked/jogged endlessly around our local areas... and that was just Lockdown 1!

So what now….?!

Well, I’ve compiled a few helpful hints/tips below to help you through the continued trying times we’re all currently facing.

Looking Good!

With the continuation of working from home, it’s easier to stay in jogging bottoms with no make-up on and your hair up in a messy bun or fresh from the shower without so much as a comb through! But, looking good is an important part of feeling good. Try to make a bit of an effort and reinstate your old morning routine.

Support ethical businesses by purchasing some new comfy but smart clothes to wear around the house from companies such as Komodo  or if you’re on a bit more of a budget Kotn  

Throw on a bit of lippy or pop on that designer watch you save for special occasions – because why not. You’re still working at home after all!

Healthy treats

Whilst it’s tempting to stock up on pizza and choccy biccys given it’s FREEZING outside, we lose light at 4pm, there’s a national lockdown which means there are no pubs or restaurants open, and on top of that BREXIT!!!! However, eating these foods that are packed full of chemicals that destroy your immune system and will end up making you increase in weight is only going to end up making you feel ultimately worse about everything.

Instead, if you can muster the willpower to create your own snacks in 10 mins there are some great ideas here and if that doesn’t cut it – there are some more awesome recipes here

Move your body

I won’t bore you too much with this one, let’s face it, we all know exercise is good for us. HOWEVER, if you’re currently suffering with mental health, fatigue, depression or SAD; motivation to exercise may be difficult. Whilst exercise is proven to benefit all of these issues, start with moving your body – just move – in whatever form that comes in:

- stand up and sit down several times on the sofa

- walk around your home every hour on the hour

- Do one squat a day or two or three

- Dance around the house to some of your favourite music – get those endorphins released!

- Try 10 star jumps when you get out of bed

- Try stretches every day or every hour

Ultimately, the more you move your body – the better you will feel. AND it’s totally free! Once you get into the habit of moving more, you’ll probably want to start a fitness routine which will improve your mental health tenfold. More here on the benefits of exercise – thank you NHS!

Creative Writing

We’ve all connected far more than ever via online sources during the last year. But now we all have a bit more time on our hands – what about going back to basics. Remember how great it used to be to receive a hand written letter that wasn’t a bill (sorry millennials – it’s what we did before social media!!) Maybe take some time to write letters to your nearest and dearest – to do nothing more than to brighten their day.

A lot of elderly and vulnerable people are sheltering at the moment so I’m sure a hand written letter would brighten their day. A lot of inspiration for letter writing can be found here thank you @CATSAUNDERS

Self-Reflect

Lockdown is a great time to reflect inwardly. What are you good at? What do you love? What is your passion? Have you achieved what you’ve wanted to in life? What would you like to do more of? What would your 80 year old self look back and say about you? If you had a magic wand…what would you do differently? What do you hope to achieve once restrictions are lifted?

All in all, my final tip is don’t be too hard on yourself. These are really trying times for every single one of us in different ways and we are all just trying to get through it. So if you feel like you’re not doing enough, don’t be too hard on yourself. Let’s keep going – doing whatever that is to keep going and at some point, life may just get a bit less difficult.

The 3 Most Important Lessons The Pandemic Has Taught Me

As we start to slowly ease out of lockdown I’m taking these moments to reflect on what these past few months have taught me. There has been so much to learn from. I’m going to share my experience of the last three months in all its vulnerable authenticity so that you can see what I learned and why I wanted to share.

My story

As some of you may know already, I was overseas in Singapore for a while last year (which was incredible) and I returned to the UK in December – I feel so grateful to have had that experience prior to such a severe global travel restriction.

I was very lucky to gain a new contract job based in London with a January start date. For those of you who don’t know, I am getting married this year (I say woop, my bank balance says blergh!), so consistency in contracts and finances is more important than ever!

I worked in this role successfully for just 3 months when the beast we know as Coronavirus swooped in and turned everyone’s world upside down and inside out. It was a shock for me because as a result of this, I was made redundant with immediate effect. This effected my world more than it usually would because I had planned my finances down to the last penny due to the wedding being this year. There also seemed to be a massive recruitment freeze and on top of all of this my partner’s wage was also unexpectedly reduced by 20% as well.

Like so many others, suddenly, and almost overnight we had gone from being able to live comfortably and afford our wedding later this year to pondering over how we were going to pay for groceries and afford the rest of our wedding that was already half paid for and of which we were of course tied in to.

A few emotions kicked in during these moments. Fear, desperation and anger followed very quickly by resilience and a burning drive to survive this and put up the middle finger to this pandemic.

I spent a good few days in the aftermath of the shock of all of this thinking innovatively and creatively. In fact, within an hour of my losing my job I was already applying for more opportunities online and reaching out to connections. I felt an overwhelming sense of panic – for anyone who has got married or is getting married, you know the cost of venues; these are in the thousands not hundreds. I had to find a solution to this problem.

Although I was applying for different contracts, there wasn’t much in the way of new opportunities around me to apply for much more. The world was going into shutdown and I felt like I was getting sucked down with it. I knew I had all these large and committed upcoming outgoings but no way to pay them.

To make matters worse (yep, now’s the time to get your violins out!) I was not eligible for any government financial support as my partner was still earning a wage and we live together. My previous employer took the decision to not Furlough me so despite giving my best efforts to that role I was given no support from the company even though this was at minimal risk and cost to themselves. Their reasoning was it was too high a risk to them when they were losing nearly all their revenue for the foreseeable future. For me it was the minimum they could do so I wasn’t on the bread line – there was a reason the government created this scheme to help protect people’s jobs – it felt beyond selfish that they were not honouring it in any way.

I remember I applied for jobs at supermarkets just to get by and got generic rejection letters from most of them as they were full! I felt like no one was giving me a branch.

It was a really weird time for me as I am usually pretty organised with money. I just felt like we were spiralling down a black hole. Panic buying became the new normal for people and the supermarket shelves were empty, no one knew what the virus was, how it was transmitted or what we should or shouldn’t be doing. It was mass hysteria and confusion multiplying by the day and breeding across social media platforms, fed by people’s curiosity and fear.

Reasons to stay positive

It was in this moment of knee jerk reactions all around me that some networking from the previous year paid off. A contract landed in my inbox and I was hired to work on a series about Frontline Workers during the pandemic. It was a 6 week miracle shining the light on some amazing people doing some really amazing things. I couldn’t have wished for a more productive and inspiring contract to be working from home on during these strange times!

Shortly after this I landed another contract starting in June which was again down to some hard work paying off.

Luckily, due to a lot of my coaching sessions and workshops being held online, it hasn’t affected my capacity to carry out sessions too much either. You can find out more information about the sort of coaching packages I offer here. Do get in touch for more information about what the different coaching packages will entail.

Learning something new

Upon reflection of all these strange turns of events, I can say the three most important takeaways for me have been:

1.       Never put off for tomorrow, what you can achieve today

The sentiment of this is something that I normally carry with me as I do get a sense of satisfaction in being proactive and getting things ticked off my To Do list. But it was so deeply heightened by the pandemic. I’m so glad I got to travel and get wedding paperwork sorted before there was a global shut down for a couple of months.

2.       This too shall pass

Another saying that I always keep close to my heart but that was cemented during the coronavirus outbreak. Every state is temporary. The desperation I felt as I lost work and all of the doors seemed to close around me was soon over in just a matter of weeks. If I had known this was going to be the outcome, how differently would I have spent those weeks? Instead of feeling fear and anger what would I felt instead? How much more productive and enjoyable would those two weeks of my life have been? As Dalia Lama said:

“Inner peace is the key: if you have inner peace, the external problems do not affect your deep sense of peace and tranquillity… without this inner peace, no matter how comfortable your life is materially, you may still be worried, disturbed, or unhappy because of circumstances.”

3.       Resilience

Resilience has been one of the most powerful and useful emotional responses I ever learned. It’s so important to remain grounded in this very temporary world. I think it’s all too easy for all of us to become complacent and think that our lives will continue on the trajectory we’ve paved for ourselves. But I think it’s all too easy to forget that sometimes it won’t, sometimes, overnight, something may happen and our world will turn upside down and we have to learn to cope with that. To adapt to that and to not let that consume our entire being.

Self-care is extremely important in maintaining resilience and a level head during hard times. You can read more about tips for managing self-care in my early blog this year here

Afterword

One of the most inspiring things that I noticed during this pandemic was how adaptable and truly versatile we all are as a species. Whilst I was catching my breath, and scrambling to keep my head above water, all around me on social media people were popping up with innovative ideas on virtual everything from PTs (shout out to Seven Movement) to House Parties to Quizzes to those who could working from home. It happened within literally the space of one week and it was truly inspiring and overwhelming to see.  I really enjoyed reading tips from Olivia in her blog What Olivia Did here it is reassuring to know that whilst we are all going through different things, we truly are all in this together.

I think it’s safe to say we will return to some sense of normality, but I know there’s a lot of the old normal I’d like to leave behind. Here’s to a new era of innovative thinkers! Let’s have a drink to this new chapter (when the pubs open of course!)